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Reply to Ferial Ashraf's statement that Muslims can claim the East as homeland.

By Charles S.Perera

The Tamils all over the world , could claim as homeland the country from which they originated, which is the South India of the Dravidians. In this context it would be pertinent to point out that the Jews claim a Biblical right to return to Palestine as the homeland promised by God to the Jews.

But, the Sri Lankan Tamils, and Sri Lankan Muslims, though they may have a claim to a spiritual link to a homeland in far away South India, or Mecca, their roots are in this little Island home –Sri Lanka, which is not a homeland with a distant connection, but the Motherland where they were born and nurtured. Therefore, Ferial Ashraf's recent statement to the Sunday Nation, that the Muslims can claim the East as homeland, is ill conceived empty rhetoric, as much as Prabhakaran and his blind followers' claim for a Tamil homeland.

On this premiss the Malays may have a claim for a homeland in Hambantota, Burghers in Gampaha, Malayalies in Colombo, and while we are at it, why not a claim of a homeland for Colombo Chetties ? But the fact is that Sri Lanka has no homelands, because it is the Motherland of Sinhala, Tamils, Muslims, and other Communities who have been born and bread in it, and love and cherish it.

Enough is enough Mme Ferial Ashraff, this madness of conceiving homeland concepts should end if we the Sri Lankans are to be a progressive nation. What is needed is a real unity of the communities, forgetting the numerical values of the population, with out getting biased by being either in the majority or in the minority. We should accept ourselves as equal partners of the Sri Lankan Nation, whether we are of the Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim or any other community. This would be possible only if those who have the means to propagate this trend of a Unitary Nation, make a sincere attempt to take the necessary steps to promote communal unity.

If we succeed in unifying the communities, into a one Nation, there wouldn't be an ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.

The media in Sri Lanka is very much divisive, and misuse their role of influencing the minds of the people for unity, progress and development. The written media is the worst, except for one or two news papers such as, the Island that toe an independent line, the others care less for promoting unity. That is because they are mostly political and their primary interest is to promote a particular political party or a political leader. The worst in this field is the Leader Publications, followed by the Daily Mirror, and many others.

Then there are those who have a vendetta against the President Mahinda Rajapakse, or against what they call the Sinhala supremacists, and the Mahawamsa idealists. The electronic media is the other miscreant. LankaeNews, Sri Lanka Guardian, Tamil Week are but a few of them. Foreign media of course has its own agenda.

In the face of Mme Ferial Ashrafs attempt, in the wake of a dwindling Tamil homeland concept, to kindle another wave of bloody sentimentality towards building a Muslim Homeland, is a sign of looming danger, that should be nipped before it takes greater proportion.

Ferial Ashraf's statement that the Muslims can claim the East as a Homeland, casts a dark shadow over any serious attempt to unify the communities. It would not be a surprise if the political solution to the ethnic problems that the great minds of the Nation are trying to work out, would turn out to be a superficial patching up of a deep rooted problem, which will one day burst open the social fabric, in all its seems. Therefore, it is the cause of the ethnic problem that has to be solved. Mme Ashraff is in no way helping to find a solution to this problem in making statements of racial nature.

As far as the Sinhala and Tamil Communities are concerned they have a greater affinity with each other than the Muslim Community. Even culturally and spiritually the Sinhala and the Tamil Communities have a common origin. The Sinhala, as much as the Tamils can interact with each other more easily. Intermarriages between the Sinhala and Tamils have no great barriers, other than perhaps to objections similar to the attitude to the castes prevalent within the communities. As both the Tamils and the Sinhala have cultural and religious affinities intermarriages cause no serious problem.

However, Intermarriages between Muslims and other Communities have sometime unsurmountable barriers. Even a love affair between a Muslim girl and a boy of another community can result in serious consequences. In this context a homeland for Muslims envisaged by Ferial Ashraff will only accentuate the Communal difference, between the Sinhala and Tamil Communities, even if the Sinhala and Tamil Communities were to find a lasting unity through strengthening their bonds of similarity.

Hence the Muslim Leaders, and politicians like Ferial Ashraff, should consider ways and means to change their mentality in keeping with the necessity to build a lasting communal unity. The Sri Lankan Muslims are an evolving community, more open minded and less fundamental in their religious attitude.

Therefore, the Muslim leaders should instead of giving into accepting the existing separateness as inevitable consequence of being Muslim, seek to relax the rigid religious tenants to strengthen closer social ties between the Sinhala and Tamil Communities, instead of segregating themselves further in dreaming homeland concepts.

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